Hitman Hamad Assaad's ambush murder captured on police cameras Authorities were about to raid tattooed underworld figure's Sydney house Police Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad was doing surveillance Assaad was gunned down on driveway in front of his 12-year-old nephew Executed hitman Hamad Assaad's gangland murder was captured on video by police as they prepared to raid his home. The 29-year-old underworld figure was repeatedly shot in front of his 12-year-old nephew in Sydney's south-west on Tuesday. Two gunmen ambushed him on his driveway, at Georges Hall, as the Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad conducted surveillance on his house,...

BILL O'Reilly's on-air showdown with lefty hero Michael Moore may have pro vided the biggest fireworks of the care fully crafted coronation known as the Democratic National Convention, so it's no surprise that the Fox News Channel star caused a stir at the Creative Coalition bash at Louis Boston the other night. PAGE SIX's Chris Wilson reports O'Reilly seemed like a skunk at the picnic in the VIP section, where diehard Dems Leon ardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, Bianca Jagger, Richard Schiff, Billy Bal dwin, Alyssa Milano, Ellen Burstyn and Richard Kind passed through during a performance by the Red Hot...

A source within the NYPD has reported that an armed 62 year old man tried to sneak in to the Trump Tower late Tuesday night. Interestingly the suspect who was found with a semi-automatic handgun fitted with a silencer has been identified as Barry Lee Bush, a former Newark NJ FBI agent who has been dead since 2007. A Secret Service agent discovered Bush after he had circumvented a security partition on the bottom floor of the Trump Tower. Questioned by Secret Service at the scene, Bush who initially identified himself as Barry Franklyn, remained silent offering no explanation for...

Mob hitman who says he was the man on the grassy knoll and killed JFK to be released - and he still insists he did it A man who claims he assassinated President John F. Kennedy has been moved this week from a high security jail to a less secure one in Illinois in preparation for his release next spring after 36 years behind bars. James Files, 72, says that he was the man on the grassy knoll back on November 22, 1963, and that he fired the bullet into Kennedy's head that ultimately killed him. Now, the CIA and...

HARTFORD, Conn. – A Connecticut man has been convicted of hiring a hit man to kill his pregnant girlfriend after she refused to have an abortion. A jury in Hartford Superior Court found 23-year-old Carlton "C.J." Bryan guilty Thursday of conspiracy to commit murder and being an accessory to murder. He faces a potential life prison sentence. Sentencing is set for July 30.

Eight years ago, one woman was confronted by a hit man who had been hired by her husband to murder her. She killed the hit man with her bare hands. Now, on the heels of her husband's release from prison, she is encouraging others who find themselves in similar situations to fight for their lives. Susan Walters of Portland, Oregon, was known as Susan Kuhnhausen back in 2006 when her then-husband Michael Kuhnhausen sent a hit man to murder her. Susan bravely fought back and wound up killing the hit man with her bare hands. "His last words on this...

In the second season of the BBC's hit show "Sherlock," shadowy snipers threaten the eponymous detective's friends by skulking around stairwells with high-powered rifles or infiltrating their homes and workplaces. In real life, targets of assassination in Britain are more likely to be killed while walking their dogs or going shopping, new research finds. The study of contract killings spanning from 1974 to 2013, published in The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, finds that assassinations are often rather mundane. "Hit men are familiar figures in films and video games, carrying out 'hits' in underworld bars or from the rooftops with...

Two men being held in jail while awaiting trial for cigarette trafficking are accused of plotting to kill witnesses against them. In an indictment unsealed in Brooklyn Supreme Court Thursday, Basel Ramadan and Yousseff Odeh are charged with conspiracy to murder witnesses and with soliciting a potential hit man. The murder-for-hire plot was hatched from New York City's Rikers Island jail where the two have been held since their May arrest on the initial cigarette-trafficking and money laundering charges. The Staten Island Advance reports that Odeh was a supporter of blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the spiritual guide for the...

MUSKEGON, MI – Today is judgment day for 21-year-old Julia Charlene Merfeld, who thought she was hiring a hit man to murder her husband but really was being video-recorded with an undercover police officer. Merfeld’s sentencing is set for 1:30 p.m. today, July 30. Chief Muskegon County Circuit Judge William C. Marietti earlier committed to cap her minimum sentence at six years in state prison, but he has the discretion to set her maximum sentence at anything up to life. Merfeld pleaded guilty June 27 to solicitation to murder. MLive and the Muskegon Chronicle will cover the sentencing live online...

Ex-IRS agent sentenced to prison in murder-for-hire plot A former IRS agent who opened a tax preparation business was sentenced Friday to nearly 24 years in prison for defrauding clients out of more than $11 million and then attempting to hire a hit man to kill four of them. Steven Martinez, 51, of Ramona was sentenced in San Diego federal court to 286 months in prison and five years of supervised release. He was also ordered by District Court Judge William Hayes to forfeit all the property, including a home in Mexico, and other possessions that he purchased with clients'...

The wife of a former Kaufman County Justice of the Peace was taken into custody early Wednesday morning and charged with capital murder in relation to the deaths of Mike and Cynthia McLelland and Mark Hasse. Kim Lene Williams was arrested just before 3:00 a.m. and is now being held on a $10 million bond. Her husband, Eric Williams, was arrested on Saturday morning for allegedly making terroristic threats against city officials. He is being held behind bars on a $3 million bond. Sources told CBS 11 News that Williams is also expected to be charged with capital murder in...

A suspected hitman from the Camorra or Neapolitan Mafia has been arrested after police obtained a security video which seemingly shows him gunning down a rival mobster last December in a cheese factory as reported by ANSA: "the 20-second security-camera footage allegedly shows Gianluca Troise pursuing a member of a rival Naples mafia clan, Luigi Felaco, bringing him down with a shot, racing after him after he gets up, and finishing him off with four shots to the head." [Video] A turf war for control over drug markets in Naples, Italy between the rival Scissionisti and Di Lauro clans has...

The son of Winter Hill Gang hit man John “The Executioner” Martorano is facing armed robbery, assault and domestic violence charges stemming from assaults on his wife and a random stranger, as well as car theft during a five-day period, police and prosecutors said. “I had taken several blows to the head and was choked repeatedly,” Vincent Martorano’s wife, Dina, told Saugus officers hours after the couple fought the night of May 9 in Room 24 of the Avalon Motel on Route 1, according to her statement. Investigators said in their report, “She stated that she was afraid of him...

An Ohio woman who compared animal-welfare work to the liberation of World War II concentration camps has been charged with soliciting a hit man to fatally shoot or slit the throat of a random fur-wearer, federal authorities said. Meredith Lowell, 27, of Cleveland Heights, appeared Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, where a magistrate judge ordered her held by the U.S. Marshals Service pending a hearing next week, court records show. One of her defense attorneys, Walter Lucas, declined comment when reached by phone after the court appearance. Investigators say the FBI was notified in November of a Facebook...

Meredith Lowell of Cleveland Heights was arrested for allegedly soliciting a hitman to kill any adult who walked out of the local public library and was wearing fur, according to CBS News. Lowell allegedly included these details in an email to an undercover FBI agent who contacted her: "I am paying you $730 to kill one person wearing fur who is 12 or older - hopefully at least 14 years, however 12 years old or older is fine. I want them to be dead in under two minutes"

A hired hit man in Brazil never got the job done. Instead, he fell in love with his victim and conjured a plan to fake her death with the help of some ketchup, the U.K. Daily Mail reports. Carlos Roberto de Jesus was hired by Maria Nilza Simoes to murder Iranildes Aguiar Araujo, whom she suspected of having an affair with her husband. But the plan went awry when de Jesus fell in love at first sight with his intended victim and confessed the plot. The pair then conjured up a plan to fool his employer into believing he had...

HIDALGO COUNTY - A suspected hitman wanted for murder and on the run for almost 4 years will be arriving in the Valley. Eduardo Leme de Oliveira was arrested in the Mexican state of Sonora last week. The Brazilian-native is the suspect in the shooting death of Juan Antonio Morales in October 2008. He reportedly committed the murder as a favor for the victim's wife and her reported lover. At first, Mexican authorities refused to release Oliveira saying he was a Mexican national. The only way Sheriff Lupe Trevino could bring him back to face the charges was to prove...

Glendora, California (CNN) -- It's the kind of Southern California town made for daydreaming: Quiet streets and sunny skies, a place where tranquility seems rarely to be disturbed. But according to police, as well as classified U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks, the Los Angeles suburb of Glendora was the scene of an international assassination plot. The scheme involved would-be killers hiding out in a low-budget motel and an elaborate plan that, at first, involved shooting the victim, but later centered on running him over with a van, police documents disclose. "I've been a police officer here for more than...

Prominent Washington aide John Wheeler was assassinated by a hitman in a targeted killing, his widow has claimed. Katherine Klyce said the way her late husband’s body was dumped at a landfill site could only have been carried out by a professional. The 66-year-old suggested his work with the Pentagon over his decades-long career could have made him enemies who wanted rid of him.

Mexican soldiers captured a 14-year-old U.S. citizen suspected of being a drug gang hitman as he attempted to travel to the United States. Edgar Jimenez, known as "El Ponchis," worked for the South Pacific drug cartel in Morelos state, outside Mexico City, the army said Friday. The boy was caught late Thursday as he boarded a plane in the city of Cuernavaca in Morelos. He was travelling to the border city of Tijuana across from San Diego, California, with two of his sisters, one of whom is believed to be the lover of one of the cartel's bosses, the army...

SAN ANTONIO — A Catholic priest charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy in 2008 in the rural parish where he worked west of here was rearrested last week in Dallas and charged with trying to hire someone to kill his alleged victim. Father John M. Fiala, 52, was in Dallas County Jail on one count of solicitation to commit murder and two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, officials said. A judge set bail at $700,000.

The Mexican Army is hunting a 12-year-old assassin who is allegedly employed by a drug cartel to torture and murder its enemies, Sky News reported today. Known simply as El Ponchis — which means "The Cloak" — the young boy has been accused of helping wage a turf war in the central Morelos state. Reports said he was paid $3,000 per murder and that he tortured his victims before killing them. He often cuts his victim's throat, leaving the head attached by just a thread.

THE Mexican Army is hunting a 12-year-old assassin who is allegedly employed by a drug cartel to torture and murder its enemies. Known simply as El Ponchis - which means "The Cloak" - the young boy has been accused of helping wage a turf war in the central Morelos state. Reports said he was paid $US3000 per murder and that he tortured his victims before killing them. He often cuts his victim's throat, leaving the head attached by just a thread. Videos of El Ponchis attacking one enemy with a stick and cutting the throat of another have appeared online,...

EDINBURG — Six people accused of a February drug-related slaying faced capital murder charges Thursday morning. The sextet of suspects are allegedly part of a local drug smuggling group that ordered a hit of one of their own after he allegedly stole a load of marijuana delivered to a customer in February, investigators said. Hidalgo County sheriff's deputies found Gilberto Aguilar beaten and shot to death on Feb. 6 in a remote field north of Palmview. Investigators believe Aguilar was kidnapped, beaten with brass knuckles and fatally shot after he stole a load of marijuana. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño...

MEXICO CITY (BNO NEWS) – The bodies of at least 72 people were found in a mass grave near San Fernando, a town located in Mexico's Tamaulipas state, officials said. The alleged dumping ground for victims of the country's drug war was discovered after a man with a gunshot wound arrived at a military checkpoint asking for medical help, the Mexican Navy said in a statement. Army forces supported by air units went to the area where the man was attacked, sighting suspected drug hitmen who opened fire on the Marines. According to the Navy, in the clashes one soldier...

"That's him." Five men in a blue sedan watched a short, fat fellow in a summer-weight suit walk out of his apartment building at 250 E. 178th St. in the Bronx. The time was 7:55 a.m. on July 25, 1939. The man, bound for the E. Tremont Ave. subway station, was right on schedule. Jacob (Kuppy) Migden, a fledgling Brooklyn hoodlum who had spent a week tailing the prey, confirmed that he was the right man. The sedan's driver, Seymour (Blue Jaw) Magoon, dropped the big car in gear. He prowled past the quarry, did a U-turn, then approached from...

My Mother Hired A Hitman To Kill Me: The Shocking Story Of A Muslim Woman Whose Parents Disapproved Of Her Western Lifestyle By Sofia Hayat 03rd September 2009 Ordeal: Sofia Hayat [Pic in URL] was imprisoned and her mother threatened to kill her because she led a Western lifestyle. The text message forwarded to me from my younger sister Saira was concise and chilling: 'Mum's sent a hit man to kill you,' it read. 'Be careful.' As I read those words, my first instinct wasn't fear or even shock, but simply survival. I'd become accustomed to behaviour like this from...

MEXICO CITY (AFP) – Police on Saturday said they arrested a Mexican drug cartel hitman wanted in connection with the abduction of a US anti-kidnap expert in December and the death of at least five people. German Torres Jimenez, who allegedly works for the powerful Gulf drug cartel, was detained after a shootout in the eastern city of Veracruz, Mexico's Public Safety Secretariat (SSP) said in a statement. ... Torres is allegedly one of the founders of Los Zetas, the armed wing of the Gulf cartel. Los Zetas reportedly took control of the organization when cartel boss Osiel Cardenas was...

Hit Man Misses, Shot Dead by Target 03 April 2009 By Carl Schreck / The Moscow Times Here's a self-defense story to warm the hearts of any NRA members who might stumble upon this blog. A hit man sent to kill a businessman in the Moscow region missed his target Tuesday night, giving the would-be victim enough time to return fire and shoot his attacker dead, regional investigators said Wednesday. At around 5 a.m. Tuesday morning, the businessman showed up at the police precinct in the Moscow region town of Shyolkovo and told the duty officers that half an hour...

Description: A CEO in a public relations crisis seeks a quick exit without depriving his children of his lucrative life-insurance policy so he hires a hitman through a friend. Once the crisis passes, he has second thoughts and tries to cancel the hit but learns it might not be so easy. Watch here.

A source in Beijing says that the murder in Beijing of American Todd Bachman and the wounding of his wife Barbara and their Chinese tour guide were committed by someone other than the individual identified in China’s state-run press. The three were attacked on August 9 while visiting the Drum Tower, a popular Beijing tourist site. The next day, Xinhua reported that they had been murdered by a 47-year-old factory worker named Tang Yongming who had recently been thrown out of work. Tang was said to have committed the murder out of hopelessness and rage at society, and then to...

Edward F. Bachner IV spent years prowling dark corners of the Internet, where he sought a hit man to carry out the "permanent retirement" of an unidentified woman, according to a federal complaint filed Tuesday. Bachner, who was accused this week of buying a dangerous pufferfish toxin, suggested in one e-mail that payment for the murder would be an AK-47 assault rifle and $8,000, the complaint alleges. "If we have an agreement, I can send you specific info that will get you within 5 yards of mark on . . . any weekday," Bachner wrote, according to the court record....

FBI Says Woman Sought Hit Man On Craigslist Woman Allegedly Wanted To 'Eradicate' Wife Of Man She Met OnlinePOSTED: 10:34 am EST January 27, 2008 SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A Michigan woman is accused of posting an ad on the Internet hoping to find somebody to kill the wife of a California man she had met online and had had an affair with. Forty-nine-year-old Ann Marie Linscott was arrested at her home in Grand Rapids, Mich., last week. Federal prosecutors this week will seek to have her transferred to northern California to face charges. According to court documents, Linscott put an...

TIJUANA, Mexico – A key hitman for Mexico's Arellano Felix drug cartel was arrested on Saturday in this crime-ridden border city, in another coup for President Felipe Calderón's clampdown on traffickers. After an anonymous tip-off, soldiers stormed a house and arrested Alfredo Araujo Avila, also known as Popeye, Tijuana's military chief Gen. German Redondo told reporters. “He is considered one of the most dangerous hitmen of the Arellano Felix cartel,” Gen. Redondo said. Araujo Avila had dodged arrest for a decade in Tijuana, which is just over the U.S. border from San Diego. He is wanted in the United States...

The saga of the scandal-plagued Democratic fundraiser with ties to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton took another strange twist after he mailed a suicide note last week to a legal organization. A person who saw the letter said Thursday that the note from Hong Kong-born Norman Hsu explicitly stated that he "intended to commit suicide." The person declined to reveal the exact phrasing, but said it was not rambling in nature. The individual spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about it. The letter arrived at the New York offices of...

'Witch hitman' jailed for life 11/09/2007 19:47 - (SA) Pietermaritzburg - A man promised R10 000 to kill a woman suspected of killing people through witchcraft has been jailed for life by the Pietermaritzburg High Court. The man, Blessing Malinga, 30, of Empangeni, pleaded guilty to the murder of Maria Buthelezi by gunning her down in her house after allegedly being hired by Mkhombiseni Sithole of Gluckstadt in northern KwaZulu-Natal. Several of Sithole's family had died recently, and they believed that the deaths stemmed from by witchcraft practised by Buthelezi. The Sitholes decided to kill her and hired Malinga, the court was...

PITTSBURGH The F-B-I says professionals in Pittsburgh are being targeted in a so-called "hitman" e-mail scheme that may have originated in Russia. The e-mails, mostly received around Christmas, tell the recipient that there is a contract out on their life, generally for 50-thousand dollars. The sender then goes on to tell the supposed target that if they send the hitman more money than that -- generally ranging from 80-thousand to 150-thousand dollars -- the hitman will leave them alone. The F-B-I says it first became aware of the scam when people in Atlanta and New Orleans got similar e-mails in...

Albert Jackson Sterling II left the back door unlocked for the man he hired to kill his pregnant wife, police say. As the Sterlings and their 3-year-old son drove to the airport, Jeffrey Thompson slipped into their stately brick home in Allen, and waited. The plan had been to put on Mr. Sterling's gloves, kill his wife, dump her body and leave her car in a different location, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. For that, Mr. Sterling would pay him $2,500. "The chicken has flown the coop," Mr. Sterling said in a voicemail message to Mr. Thompson recovered by...

ALLEN - A pregnant woman came home to a frightening sight and even more frightening news, police said: A strange man was in her bedroom and told her he had been hired by her husband to kill her. "Your husband wants you murdered," the man told Roxane Sterling, according to police reports. He then told the woman, who is eight months pregnant, to call police. The man had entered the empty house in this Dallas suburb while the woman's husband and their 3-year-old son were visiting relatives in New Mexico. Albert Jackson Sterling II faces two counts of criminal solicitation...

MESA, Ariz. --A 22-year-old woman was arrested after authorities say she tried to hire someone to kill another woman whose photo appeared on her boyfriend's MySpace.com Web page. Heather Michelle Kane was booked Tuesday for investigation of conspiracy to commit murder, Mesa Detective Jerry Gissel said. She was arrested after she met an undercover Mesa police detective at a grocery store, gave the officer $400 and offered to pay an additional $100 once the woman had been killed, according to court records. The records say Kane gave the undercover officer photographs taken from her boyfriend's social networking Web page of...

We were informed by my child's principal that Senators Hillary Clinton and Blanch Lincoln would be at his school for a reading program presentation. The letter said that only students and faculty could attend -- no parents or friends would be admitted. Usually the school has a real open door policy for parents. The program will not be taped (for later viewing of parents) as Clinton's press secretary will not allow it. So I can't even review what was said or hold anyone accountable. Supposedly this event is not to be used for political purposes. So what is it for?

China Executes Former Tycoon for Murder By ALEXA OLESEN, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 5 minutes ago A Chinese tycoon once worth more than $360 million has been executed by lethal injection for having a man who tried to blackmail him killed, a court statement and news reports said Saturday. Yuan Baojing and two accomplices were put to death by lethal injection Friday after a court in China's northeastern Liaoning province upheld a death sentence handed down last year, said a notice on the official Web site of China's courts. News photos in several Chinese papers showed a bespectacled Yuan,...

A contract is still a contract – even if it is a contract to kill By Alan Hamilton A woman who hired a hitman to kill her has been awarded £2,000 because she is still alive IT SOUNDS like the law of 1920s East Side Chicago, but it is also the law of England. A contract is a contract, even if it is a contract to kill. Break it, and if the mob don’t get you, Maidstone Crown Court will. Kevin Reeves, 40, was jailed for 15 months and ordered to pay £2,000 compensation after accepting £20,000 from a friend...

Reputed hitman captured by FBI Frank 'The German' Schweihs, 75, had disappeared from his Dania Beach home in April, one of two defendants in a Chicago mob case who slipped away from federal lawmen. Associated Press A reputed mob enforcer from Dania Beach who had been the focus of a manhunt since April, when federal prosecutors unsealed racketeering-murder charges against him, was arrested Friday in Kentucky, the FBI announced. Frank ''The German'' Schweihs, 75, was captured without incident by the FBI at his apartment in Berea, Ky., a rugged, hilly area 40 miles south of Lexington. Until April, Schweihs, allegedly...

PARCHMAN, Miss. (AP) — A 77-year-old convicted hitman was executed Wednesday, becoming the oldest person in the nation put death since capital punishment was reinstated nearly three decades ago. John B. Nixon Sr. still claimed innocence as he was strapped to the death chamber gurney, and blamed one of his sons for the 1985 murder of a Mississippi woman.

FALMOUTH - A man in jail awaiting trial on rape and assault charges offered to pay $3,000 to a state trooper posing as a hit man to kill two women, according to court records. Antonio T. Ferreira, 42, of Falmouth wanted the woman who accused him of rape killed so she couldn't testify against him, according to court records. Ferreira, who is originally from Brazil, may be in the country illegally and his passport must be surrendered if he makes bail, according to court records. He was being held on $50,000 cash bail on the rape and assault charges, but...